


Of the Scars in Your Mind

by CateyedCrow



Category: Cain Saga and Godchild
Genre: Blood, Blood and Violence, Body Horror, Canonical Child Abuse, Father-Son Relationship, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Introspection, M/M, Master & Servant, Medicine, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Past Child Abuse, Religious Content, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Scars, Stream of Consciousness, Victorian Attitudes, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-17 19:36:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15468543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CateyedCrow/pseuds/CateyedCrow
Summary: In the cold of winter, in the heat of the fire, old scars start to pull and tighten, bringing up old pains and old memories. But sometimes all that's needed is a soothing touch and a healing balm, and someone who understands.When Cain's scars start to pain him in bleak midwinter, Riff has, if not a cure, then certainly something to help.N.B.: the graphic depictions of violence are confined to the second chapter (which is a narrated memory). The acts of violence are alluded to in the first and third chapter, but not described. Feel free to skip chapter 2; chapters 1 and 3 can be read without it easily.(Written for Camp NaNoWriMo July 2018.)





	1. Tea and Oranges

_For there are deeds  
Which have no form, sufferings which have no tongue. _

_\--Percy Bysshe Shelley,_ The Cenci _(1819), Act III, scene 1_

 

The fire in the grate was low but hot--and fortunately, too, as the spate of cold weather showed no sign of easing. And spring was all too far away yet.

Three weeks past Christmas, so all that merriment was spent and gone, and now the bitter cold was settling in to every corner and every bone.

And for all that the days were getting longer, as every astronomer and every long-lost pagan knew they would after the death of the year (perhaps he _was_ starting to think superstitiously--perhaps too superstitiously), evening would still close in so early. That blue cast of evening’s falling light on the walls, gray clouds dyed grayer in their stacked and rumpled rows--and perhaps, on some fortunate days, a thin line of orange light out at the horizon, light without the sun, somewhere to the west, perhaps so far as the sea, where there was sunlight (perhaps).

Cain was in the library, nearby to the fire in the grate, and reading. Or nearly reading. He had a book open on his lap, but he’d not turned a page for nearly an hour. And he’d not drunk but half the cup of tea Riff had set beside him and now it was grown cold.

Riff came to collect the cup and saw it cold and half full.

“Lord Cain?”

“What is it, Riff? I’m quite engrossed in--” he turned the book to look at the cover, everything about which he had forgotten, “--Cato.”

Riff had taken up the cup now, settling it without a chime, without a rattle, on a tray. “I had wondered if you might not be feeling well.”

“I’m as well as I can be, I suppose,” Cain answered, but without certainty.

“As well as you can be, Lord Cain?”

“Considering the weather.”

Riff paused then, balancing the tray between his hands, waiting as though for a cue or for the next step in a dance. The step was his.

“Is it--?” he asked.

“It is,” Cain answered.

And the word _scars_ hung between them as they both and each glanced towards the door of the library for any passing parlourmaids or chambermaids or (worst of all) Merryweather. None to be seen or heard.

Cain stared into the fire. “You know how they pull in the winter.”

Riff hesitated a moment. Then: “Perhaps we should have gone somewhere for the winter.”

“Where, Riff? The house in Cornwall? Where it’s colder and draftier than here? Or visit some tiresome relative or other in their country house? I’m glad we stayed here. At least here we can shut the doors and keep a little warmth about.”

“I had been thinking somewhere warmer--Spain or Italy.”

Cain dropped his forehead into his hand. “Not with so much to do here in London still.”

The fires and the threats--to him, to Riff, and to Merry. That was heat enough, or it should be. The frantic race to catch up with his father’s dark machinations--if only he could race out from under that shadow and find himself a step ahead for once, only for once. But it seemed his father was forever standing above or behind or beyond him, reminding him of who he was, who they both were, father and son alike.

“Perhaps next year, then, Lord Cain.”

“Yes, perhaps next year.”

His father was always behind him in those early days, forever with the whip to hand. Behind him with the whip, before him with the words. And so little changed now, so little--

“But for now,” Riff went on, “forgive me, but I sent to the chemist for a liniment. It should help. Lanolin, honey, aloe vera plant, a little wax, orange flower--"  
  
"Not rosewater."  
  
"Never, Lord Cain." Solid, certainty.  
  
"Good. I can endure having roses about because Merry likes them. But I won't have their smell clinging to me."  
  
_I have enough clinging to me._ He looked aside at Riff, standing between the sofa and the doorway, forever patient. _Perhaps that was too sharp._ And yet Riff smiled, softly, in his way.

“I am rather in a mood today, aren’t I?” Cain said.

“I believe you said you weren’t feeling very well. Perhaps you’d do well to rest upstairs.”

“Yes, perhaps it would help.” He rose, stepped closer to Riff; then, quieter, “Fetch it, and find me upstairs.”  


*** *** ***

  
Riff knocked twice and entered Cain’s room, bearing a white basin, cloths, a towel over his arm, a small white jar in the midst of the basin and upon the cloths, and a jug of warm water brought up from the kitchen. 

Cain was standing stiffly near to the foot of his bed, with a curve to his back, to keep his shirt from catching on his skin. His hands were stuffed in the pockets of his jacket.  
  
"I'd rather have chillblains than this," he said, looking towards the wall.

“I’d rather you had neither, Lord Cain.”

 So perpetually disarming the way he could say these things so offhand, charm without charm, that Cain had to smile. And now Riff was crossing the room to set the basin and cloths and jug of water on the washstand; such an ordinary gesture, but made with such familiar hands. Cain pulled and loosened his tie.

 “Lock the door, Riff.”

 “Of course.” And after he slipped the key into his pocket.

 Cain was shrugging off his jacket, his tie still loose around his neck, when Riff caught the collar and loose sleeve and pulled the jacket gently from his shoulders. Cain had set to his waistcoat buttons by the time Riff had hung up his jacket. Both waistcoat and tie had dropped to the floor by the time Riff returned and he caught them up before they could wrinkle (he hoped).

 “Please, Lord Cain. There’s no need to rush.”

 But Cain was already standing with his shirttails out. “Perhaps I’m only eager to feel better.”

 “Still,” Riff said, now putting waistcoat and tie in their places. “There’s no need to rush so.”

 “Very well, then. I shan’t touch a single button of my shirt. Nor the laces of my shoes.” And perhaps he smiled as he tucked his hands into the hip pockets of his trousers.

 And perhaps Riff smiled too.

 Cain sat on the bench at the foot of his bed. Riff knelt and with long fingers picked out the knot in the laces of Cain’s shoe. Right, left. But of course he would untie Cain’s shoes; this was a ritual of their own making, and an old one, and tied (inextricably) to this selfsame time and place: a child with a wrecked and bleeding back, unable to bend to tie his shoes, lest he open all his fresh wounds again. And so Riff had knelt and tied his shoes that first time and so many times thereafter--even after every wound was healed. But truly, how healed could one say burning, itching scars to be? He knelt: patience in his hands and in his shoulders. _How can you bear us both up as you do?_

 Barefoot and in shirtsleeves, Cain looked more ragamuffin than lord and, confiding some time earlier when locked in his room like this, he had told Riff he sometimes rather preferred loose shirttails to stiff collars and obligations. Sometimes.

 But for now he was silent, only tipping back his head as Riff, rising halfway from his kneeling crouch, began at Cain’s collar and unbuttoned his shirt. Bit by bit, one at a time, Cain still arching his back to keep the fabric away, the placket came undone.

 And no undergarments under his shirt--another old habit born of old wounds. This room was colder than the library downstairs.

 Riff drew Cain to his feet to undo his trousers; Cain stepped out of them and Riff went to put them away with his jacket and waistcoat. He turned back to find Cain still standing there, in the chill of the room, barefoot, wrapped only in his unbuttoned shirt and scant undergarments, looking small and pale and helpless. In the falling light, there were shadows cast under his eyes.

 “Lord Cain, please. It would be warmer for you in your bed.”

 “Won’t I wrinkle my shirt, Riff? After all, you were so concerned about my waistcoat.”

 Riff sighed. “Perhaps you’re beginning to feel better already.”

 “Perhaps I am,” Cain answered over his shoulder, clambering now over the bench and the bedframe and into bed. The sheets were cold; they would be warmer by and by.

 Riff stirred up the fire and loosed the bedcurtains around the bed, save on the one side facing the fireplace and the windows. Cain sat with his legs tucked under him in the middle of his bed, looking aside and turned away from the fire and the windows, in the midst of this hiding-place. And only in such a hiding-place then did Riff take Cain’s shirt gently from his shoulders. And he did so but slowly, to keep from catching on any scar.

 Cain’s head fell a little lower: now one of his two great secrets was open to the light and to the cold air: that network of scars, that lattice of marks that crossed and recrossed the whole of his back, from his shoulders to his hips, a record of violence carved in flesh.

 Over his shoulder and through his lashes, Cain could still see Riff’s downcast eyes and solemn face as he turned to drape Cain’s discarded shirt across the bench at the foot of the bed. _And what does he feel at these moments?_ Most of these scars were old, older than his time in this house. Or was this expression only a doctor’s disapproval of injury or illness? That these wounds had been left untended (more or less). Or was it something deeper? That he had been made to bear witness to the making of some of these marks, that he had been brought into this house in such a way, by way of witness to that nightly rite.

 Call that a baptism by fire, perhaps.

 Cain snatched up a pillow and pressed it to his chest, falling forward into his bed, jostling pillows and bedclothes. He sighed. His legs he burrowed down below the bedclothes.

 Riff came back, now bearing the basin and jug of water--which he set now on the hearth before the fire to warm it again. The jar of liniment he set next to Cain on the bed.

 “Is this it, then?” Cain asked, taking it up. That peculiar sort of chemist’s jar, the kind of clay pot that looked so smooth and even, perhaps even like smooth satin, but felt unexpectedly rough under a touch. The jar was bellied around the middle, like a fig, and softly gray. A paper tag hung tied with string around the wide neck. Cain took off the lid and sniffed at the contents. Oranges, to be sure, and herbs. “It looks like this tag ought to read ‘drink me,’ don’t you think?”

Riff had shed his jacket and was rolling up his sleeves. To Cain, he always seemed more like a doctor that way, for some inexplicable reason, with his sleeves rolled up. Some ghost of his lost future come back around to haunt them both. A doctor with his hands ready for--what? Birth? Death? Wounds? Surgery? Blood? Bones? Scars, at least. If nothing else. Inevitably, scars.

“It is. Do you mind the smell terribly?”

“I think I can endure it, so long as it serves its purpose.” The bedclothes were beginning to warm at last. Truth be told, the smell was hardly unpleasant.

Riff poured out the water before the fire into the basin. He dipped in a cloth and wiped his hands clean and set the cloth on the edge of the pitcher to dry before the fire.

“Must you?” Cain asked.

“The salve will work better if your skin is a little wet.”

“I know, but--” Water in the cracks and dry places of his scars would always smart and sting.

“Please try to bear it, Lord Cain.”

Riff would at least be as gentle as he could, as he had always been, even tending to the freshest marks on the first night they met. And Cain had certainly winced and whined that night. It had stung. And burned. And Riff had borne witness to it all. Even and especially to Cain’s explanation, that of a child, as to why the whole of the ritual was so important, why he deserved and had earned such a thing.

Riff dipped in a fresh cloth and wrung out the water. _So much of it pouring back out; I forget sometimes how strong his hands are_. Cain buried chin and mouth into the pillow and stared out at the headboard of his bed.

How many times had they been just as they were now? Perhaps they could be counted, if he thought on it. He would rather not. And yet, if he could dwell in the moments after--after Riff’s arrival, after the evening’s rite was over, after the worst pain had subsided, then he could think on it.

Riff daubed lightly at his back with the warm cloth. Still, The first touch of the water and Cain hissed through his teeth and flinched away--less from pain than from habit. Though it did sting as the water seeped down into the dry and stretched skin of his scars. He sighed and set his teeth.

Riff started and paused. “I am sorry, Lord Cain.”

“It needs doing,” Cain answered, though he gripped the pillow tighter and his brow furrowed. 

With some of his scars, Cain could recall the very night he had received them, the circumstances, the implements. Perhaps even the season and the weather that night. 

Riff went on with the cloth, gently as he could, touching lightly at each mark. It was, Cain thought, almost as though he were tracing a map--a wretched country, but a map of it all the same--and moving from place to place to place.

No, something else. Because though he moved from scar to scar, it was not a map, and there was no course. He moved from mark to mark, warming and cooling each, pausing then if Cain moved or tensed or shifted. He was so aware, nigh on aware as Cain himself was to each mark and each movement.

But then they both knew these marks and their history. 

The one lying nearly vertically on his right shoulder came from the horsewhip, of course, and had been made worse because there had been a welt there already from the same tool the night before and it opened again and again. 

(Yes, the water still stung, but the warmth was soothing.) 

The canes and switches and crops only ever left bruises and welts; no matter how they stung, they faded in time, but the canes could certainly break open a stroke nearly healed. They were different and used to a different purpose--they were not part of the rite, such as it was. They were purely for disobedience: speaking without being spoken to, a torn page in a book, an incorrect answer at lessons. And there had been a hunting whip too, with its hooked handle. It was the same. 

(Riff had traced these marks when he tended them too, touching each one with a cloth to clean it, then touching again with salve and covering them with brown paper dipped in water. Something to keep the sheets clean.) 

The long strokes starting at the small of his back and rising nigh to the back of his neck: a carriage whip. It made a wretched sound. He had struck mostly with the cord, but the shaft was vicious too. That one had been a rarity, for whatever reason. What meaning was there in it? Driving forward? Was that early or late? Perhaps it had been the circumstances--had they been traveling? Surely he would have brought something else with him. Or was it simply what was to hand? _I remember it, but less of what was around it than I thought_. 

It was simply what was to hand--it was not part of the rite: Cain had simply been willful and disobedient (as per usual) and this has been the punishment. And who would speak against his father who saw it happen? No one.

The scattered short strokes nearly falling in a pattern, like a spattering of rain: a scourge. Leather, of course, like the ones pious saints took to their own flesh to mortify themselves into holiness. That was one of the two great and holy tools, the scourge. The other was the horsewhip. 

The horsewhip had been his father’s favorite: short handled, with a long cord. It whistled and snapped--twice: once in the air, and once against skin. There were any number of marks made with that tool. 

One would have thought he would have preferred the scourge for the history of it, all the saints and sinners purified by it. And yet, it was so often the horsewhip. Perhaps it was the sound he favored. 

Perhaps it was the moment between the snap in the air and the snap against flesh he favored. That had been the worst moment: a breath, a moment of silence, no longer than a heartbeat, waiting for the pain to strike. And the pain was inevitable.

There had been a sense of that pause between the crack and the strike after he saw his father go over the cliffs. That was the crack. For days, even weeks, he had started at every sound, had fairly clung to Riff, thinking that his father would return--and that would be the strike. 

That strike had fallen, though. 

And so what was changed? Precious little, at least since those last days, after Riff’s arrival and before his father’s disappearance--such a peculiar lacuna: a pause wherein everything changes. More at a modulation, perhaps, where the tone of a piece changes.

Though he was bolder now.

And yet, here they were, in a reenactment of those former days: Cain bare and sprawled on his bed, wincing; Riff leaning over him, tending.

It did grate, this kind of continued obedience, this kind of ongoing memorial. It should have been an absolute break, and absolute severing, even as the first Cain was cast out of Eden. And yet it was not.

A lock of hair fell across his face and he pushed it aside.  
  
Was it such an absolute separation for that first Cain too? 

Perhaps not. For though he was a wanderer, he was only driven out. He was yet watched over.


	2. He Scourgeth Every Son Whom He Receiveth

It was always in the evening, after he had been sent to bed, but before he could go to sleep. And he would be woken if he did sleep.

Confined to the nursery or schoolroom since afternoon, he had been fed as evening had come on. Then whatever maid had been delegated to the job scrubbed at him with hot water and empty eyes, as though he were no more than a dirty cup. He did not protest. His clothes were put away and his nightshirt was pulled over his head. And he was left in his room, in the dim and fading light or in the dark, alone, until he was summoned by one of the servants again. They were loyal to his father; they were his servants twice over, both in his household and in his secret society. _What had he promised them to make them so loyal?_

A maid was usually the one who summoned him down, pulling him by the hand (or arm) or walking stiff and proud away from him and him expected to follow her fluttering and disappearing apron strings. Hushing him too, of course, if he made any sound. He knew each of them by sight but they seemed never to see him, except at times like this, dragging him forward forward towards the library.

_All my wounds and he only ever said that I was ill or weak or shy--I was an embarrassment to him because he made me an embarrassment. A small, weak child; hardly a worthy son--already sick on arsenic most days, bleeding and weeping most nights_.

He would be abandoned at the library doors--immense double doors that rose to the ceiling, with brass handles and carvings shining in the lamplight. At better times and in daylight, he liked to study the carvings, press a finger into small gaps or trace along the smooth edges. But not tonight.

Tonight he only knocked.

His father’s voice would rise from beyond the door: “Come in, Cain.”

And Cain would push open one door, step through, and close it again behind him.

“Good evening, Father.”

The first scent was always roses. The second scent was always tobacco. The third was wood or leather or the sweet scent of old books (best of all).

“Good evening, Cain.”

His father was inevitably seated in the very center of the room, in one of the great leather chairs of the library--like a leather throne for him alone. On the desk, on the window sills, on the mantle, on the hearth, in any open niche of the bookshelves, would roses--in vases, in urns, cut and fading without water, everywhere that they could be set. Even in the depths of winter, his father would have roses from greenhouses and hothouses for this purpose. And candles, too, but far fewer: the room was dim, as it ever was at this time and for this purpose.

Surrounded already by the smell of the roses (his stomach already clenching from the scent), Cain would step into the library and close the door. And he was permitted then to approach his father--a rare and wonderful thing, to be so close to him, to the one who knew him best, his own father. His father loved him. And anything done to him was from love. This was the first lesson: it was all done of love.

He stepped softly on bare feet towards his father and stopped before him, quiet, his head half-bowed, looking up at his father’s face through his eyelashes. And this was the beginning of the ritual.

“You understand the purpose of this rite.” It was not a question.

“Yes, Father.”

But his father answered all the same, as the answer was part of the ritual:

“It is to drive out the sin which is inherent in you, as proven by your name, and to redeem you and make you worthy of a holier inheritance. It is to be your salvation.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Then let us pray.”

And Cain knelt on the floor before his father and pressed his hands together as all the angels seemed to do in paintings and in the Christmas picture one of the maids had cut from a magazine and pinned low on the wall beside her bed (the angel seemed so golden, so glowing, with white wings like a swan and a white star above her forehead--if only he could be so pure as that angel). It was the proper attitude, his father had said, to bow one’s head, to kneel in penance, to fold one’s hands in supplication.

And he wondered if perhaps there should be places worn in the wood by his knees by now, the way the great stairs had moons worn into the marble from so many years and so many comings and so many goings. His mind wandered: _How many people have lived in this house? How many steps have they taken? Do I breathe air they’ve breathed?_

His father, still seated (enthroned) before him, laid his hands upon Cain’s shoulders. (Sometimes he would strike fresh wounds, sometimes he would squeeze at them, sometimes Cain would bleed from it.) Cain dropped his head lower. He should not have let himself become distracted. Even in this moment he couldn’t keep himself from sin and misdoings.

And his father spoke:

"My son, despise not thou the chastening, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him. For whom he loveth he chasteneth; and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth."

And Cain answered: “Amen.”

As one always said at the end of a prayer. And yet his father never offered up these prayers to God. They were only ever said--to whom? To himself, of course, though that realization would only come much later, in the dead of night. To Cain, in his childhood there were forever two sets of prayers: those said of Sunday mornings and among the household (morning and evening and blessings at mealtimes), and these other prayers said in the darkness of the library after the sun was well down. This rite was theirs alone, uninterrupted, an atonement or private prayers said among the family, as led by the head of the house, as was meet and right so to do.

(Then perhaps the servants in those days, too, had two sets of prayers: the light and the dark.)

“Now make your confession, Cain.”

He shifted on knees already beginning to ache and pressed his hands more tightly together. He breathed; he began.

"Almighty Father, maker of all things, judge of all men: I, your servant, acknowledge and bewail my manifold sins and wickedness which I, from time to time, most grievously have committed by thought, word, and deed against thy rule, provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against me. I do earnestly repent, and am heartily sorry for these my misdoings; the remembrance of them is grievous unto me, the burden of them is intolerable. Have mercy upon me. Have mercy upon me, most merciful Father. Forgive me all that is past, and grant that I may ever hereafter serve and please thee in newness of life, to the honour and glory of thy name. Amen.”

He had tripped over “manifold” at first, and “indignation.” Those had been early days, so soon after Leonora’s frothing and hideous death, long and well before he knew quite so much, when he had been younger, when he had been yet blind or blindfolded, and this rite had been new.

But the truth was, at that time, kneeling on rosewood and ebony, the compass rose embedded in the floor (always roses, everywhere) and touched with brass symbols at center and at its points (he saw it for the ritual circle it was, now), he _had_ been heartily sorry for his misdoings--even the misdoings he thought he hadn’t committed or didn’t recall. Certainly his father knew those misdoings. His father knew all his misdoings. His father knew his misdoings before he had even come into the world. And the burden of his name, his very existence, the wretched horror of his having to come into this world bearing all his sins like a dark veil trailing behind him, was intolerable. Some nights he would weep small tears on the polished floor.

It was only after the breaking, after he was witness to his father’s pain and mortality, that these dark prayers shimmered with what they were: blasphemies and distortions, his father seeking to take the place of God. “Through a glass darkly” indeed.

“You can be forgiven, Cain, but you must first make your penance.”

“Yes, Father. I do humbly repent.”

His father settled against the back of his chair. “You must prove that you are sorry. I will have you recite Genesis 4.”

Coiled like a snake in his father’s lap was the horsewhip--long, dark, sinuous, all black braided leather, well-oiled, kept locked in a chest until it was needed for this, their ritual. Cain’s stomach and face tightened when he saw it. His father took it up, still coiled, in his hand. “In this story is your story, Cain.”

And now they would both rise and go to the alcove aside to the library, a dark closet of a place, lit with only a pair of candles. His father would draw back the red curtain that hid the prie-dieu within, with roses set in silver urns before and beside it. It faced only a red wall and nothing more--neither window, nor icon, nor painting, nor statue to break the redness of the wall.

Cain would draw up his nightshirt, as he had been taught, and step into that narrow, red space. He knelt again and set his hands on the top of the prie-dieu--palms yet together; supplication. But he would tremble now, kneeling in this small place. Kneeling on the floor of the library, he had hope that his father would only ask him to go without eating for the next day or that he would only draw out a riding crop or a cane for whatever misdoing had been done. But Genesis 4 and the horsewhip--this was the full and true rite. He knelt, he trembled, and he tried to slow his breathing. All was done of love, all was done of love.

His father spoke again: “Here, then, will your penance be made. Genesis 4, Cain.”

And, head yet bowed and shuddering, Cain began: “And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord. And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

“And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering.”

Behind him, he heard the sound of the whip uncoiling and sliding on the polished floor. His stomach tightened again. He swallowed hard.

“But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.”

Then came the first sound: the hiss as his father drew back the whip and he waited, and he waited, the skin of his back itching and tingling in the anticipation of the strike--

Until, whistling, it snapped and came. And he cried out and was silent a moment and laid his face against the desk of the prie-dieu, which was blessedly cool, and breathed. But only for a moment: he must go on:

“And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.”

And, again, he heard the soft slithering of the whip on the floor, the hideous pause as his father raised it, and the whistle before it struck, cracking against his skin.

He cried out again, gripping at the desk. Two. Perhaps two would be enough. It was done of love. Perhaps two would be enough tonight. He felt the first trickle of blood beginning to slide along his back. He felt tears forming in his eyes. He must go on:

“And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.

“And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?”

The first of his tears fell on the desktop--small round jewels; they glittered.

“And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from the earth--”

Again: soft, sliding sounds of the whip behind him. The sound of his father’s jacket and sleeve as he raised it. The sound of his father’s breath. His father was smiling, Cain was sure. This was a good and holy thing. It was done of love.

“--which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand; when thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.”

And Cain paused. For this was when another strike could come, inevitably. It was the right time and place. And so he waited, gripping at the top of the desk, every nerve aching for the strike, skin twitching, and the first drops of blood sliding into the hollow of the small of his back.

It came at last, vicious and sudden, striking along from his right shoulder to his left hip, peeling open skin and welting around the wound.

And Cain cried out again for the pain of the strike as for the pain of the punishment left upon him: his curse; his tears spilled out onto the desk of the prie-dieu. He coughed: the pain seemed to steal his very breath away for a moment. Then, gasping:

“And Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me.”

And herein was the moment between the fear and the promise, like the moment between the raising of the whip and the strike. And Cain himself lay in that moment before the strike, his eyes pinched shut tight, willing himself not to tense his back, willing himself not to flinch.

To no avail as he cried out and twisted under this new strike--lower this time, along his ribs and waist and stinging sharply at the far end.

But here was the promise. He caught his breath. Here was the promise in the next verse. He would not fall, he would not drop to the floor as he had before. He would keep kneeling and go on with his penance:

“And the Lord said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.”

But then he paused, for the next verse was the worst. Tears and blood still dripping down his skin, the first strikes no longer numbed as they were at first but beginning to burn and making him twist at the pain of them, he swallowed hard and gripped at the prie-dieu.

“Continue, Cain.”

Trembling in earnest now, a tremble even in his voice: “And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.”

He heard the whip crack in the air this time as he father raised it. This was the mark of Cain, given to him to prove his father’s love. He heard the crack in the air and then he waited, sweating, bleeding, tears in his eyes.

The strike fell at last, cracking against his skin. Cain cried out, pushing against the desk. Then came the cracking again in the air as his father raised the whip again. A breath, a heartbeat, and it struck again. Cain gripped hard at the desk, even as his knees buckled, even as fresh tears welled up, and promised that he would not collapse. He could not breathe, he could not breathe. Another crack. Another strike.

But he did collapse to the floor, gripping the prie-dieu with one hand, bearing himself up on the floor with the other. Sweat was beginning to drip into his wounds and it burned and it stung and he writhed from it. And now he was sobbing.

And his father said “Continue, Cain.”

He could not hold himself up; one foot out from under him, leaning with both palms flat to the floor.

Panting, heaving, on the verge of vomiting from the pain, he did not move but he did go on (quietly, desperately, the end was so close):

“And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.”

Cain was shaking now, all but lying on the floor, dropping lower and lower. Through his tears he saw flecks of his blood standing out, shining, on the floor. Rubies, garnets.

Still nigh sobbing, he went on, face to the floor, desperate for the end.

“And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.”

A final strike: and this one knocked him from where he had been trying to kneel. Now Cain was truly on the floor at his father’s feet, heaving for breath, dizzy with pain. He lay still, he closed his eyes, he waited.

And his father said: “The Word of the Lord.”

And from where he now lay sprawled on the floor, a true penitent, Cain answered, “Thanks be to God.”

“Very good.” His father drew out a handkerchief and began to wipe clean the whip. “This is the mark which is put on you, Cain.” And he coiled the whip again and set it on the desk of the prie-dieu.

Cain had not yet moved; he did not want to move, for to move would be to awaken new hurts, to pull on fresh wounds. He lay still and listened to his father’s footsteps as he walked out into the library to collect his pipe from the mantle and back again into the alcove.

There was quiet for a moment as he packed tobacco into his pipe. Cain closed his eyes.

The sound of a match, the quick smell of sulfur, and then the smell of smoke from the pipe. And Cain relaxed, pressing the whole of his body against the floor, exhausted and still weeping silently.

His father stood over him then.

“And so too will you build a city, Cain.” He drew from his pipe and breathed it into the room to mix with the smell of the roses. “The foundations of your city have already been set.”

Cain lay still, waiting to faint, to sleep, to die--but did not. Instead he answered: “I will do all I can to honour you, Father.”

It seemed he could feel his father looking down upon him, smiling at him, with a kind of pride or certainty. To build this city, that was his destiny.

“You’ve done your penance, Cain. Go to bed now.”

“Yes, Father.” And he staggered to his feet and drew on his nightshirt again.

His father followed as he stumbled his way back to the library doors and he turned at the last moment to see his father sitting in his favorite chair, smoking his pipe, and looking content.

“Goodnight, Father,” he said, and closed the door.

In the morning, some maid would be dispatched to scrub at him again, to pour a pitcher of water of his back while he stood in a basin and writhed and screamed and cried from the stinging and burning pain. But for now he felt only exhausted. And numb from exhaustion. And he hoped the numbness would last long enough that he could stagger to his bed and sleep--with his nightshirt pulled up and his freshest wounds starting to scab over in the night air. (He had collapsed in the corridors before and been collected by someone--a maid or a footman--and deposited in his bed. He’d woken because they had dropped him into his bed and the sharpness of his welts and wounds had startled him awake again.) He pressed on, looking only at his bare feet moving step by step down the dark corridor.

It was done of love.

His room, his bed. At last. An empty birdcage hanging near one window (he had found the canary that had once lived there torn to shreds in the bottom of the cage). Schoolbooks. His dressing gown. He climbed onto his bed, laid atop the bedclothes, and pulled up his nightshirt again and collapsed at last.  
  
It was done of love. There were those fathers who whipped their sons in a frenzy of anger. This ritual was never a frenzy. It was always measured. It was done of love, of course, and not anger.

And there were always roses. Always the suffocating smell of nauseating roses.


	3. Balm of Gilead

And was he, the one named after that second sinner, not watched over as well?

For good or ill--no, for both good and ill, he was, indeed, watched and watched over.

“I’ve done with the water, Lord Cain.”

“That is a relief.” And he dropped his ear to the pillow now, watching Riff. His back felt cooler, almost cold, but the stinging had eased.

Riff laid the cloth on the mouth of the pitcher and took up the jar from where it lay among the bedclothes. Such long fingers, such long fingers. So suited for tending and mending: stitching wounds, winding bandages, blotting away spilt blood--and never sullied by any of it for long. Cain settled himself deeper into his nest.

“It’s the same recipe you made last winter, isn’t it?”

“By and large it is, yes, but I think the chemist did a better job of mixing it than I did.” 

“It worked last winter when you made it down in the kitchen, though,” Cain said as he closed his eyes.

“Then I hope it will work this winter as well, Lord Cain.” And Riff was smiling faintly.

He dipped two fingers in the jar to take up a little of the liniment and spread it across Cain’s shoulder. It was cold at first, until warmed by his skin and Riff’s hand alike. It didn’t sting: it soothed. And once warmed, the scents of oranges and honey began to drift in the air.

Twin scars ran from atop Cain’s right shoulderblade across and down--Geminid scars, so to speak. Another nearly followed the same track, though it lay lower, in the valley below his shoulder and down across to his ribs. Riff began there, for want of anywhere else to begin or perhaps because he too could see the brighter redness and the tightened skin there, rubbing the liniment in small circles down the length of each scar. A moment and then another daube and press at the top of each of Cain’s shoulders now.

“The whole of your back is stiff, Lord Cain,” Riff said, pressing harder now on Cain’s shoulders. “You’ve not felt well for some days.”

“When they pull in winter, I remember how I came by them, Riff. You know that.”

“I do, yes.”

“So I’m thinking on that. How can I not? I’m lying here and it’s as though nothing has changed, as though we were still trapped in the house in Cornwall. And honestly, Riff: has anything changed? My father is not dead, but alive. And he may as well have trapped me again, with everything he’s done. It’s only that the trap is larger this time--”

“--Lord Cain, please: you’ll only make yourself feel worse.” 

And Riff pushed, then rubbed at some hidden knot that lay just in the curve between Cain’s neck and his shoulder. Cain protested, groaned a little, but the knot gave way under Riff’s hands and Cain dropped his face into his pillow again and sighed. In the warmth of the fire, the melting salve made the room smell sweeter. Cain mumbled into the pillow:

“I would still be trapped in the house in Cornwall, if not for you.”

Trapped, or dead more likely.

Or perhaps not--after all, he was marked by his (ostensibly) almighty father (earthly, not heavenly) and therefore under that protection. And how did the first Cain die? Crushed, killed with the jaw of an ass, buried alive, the stones of his house falling upon him.

But the memory of a painting drifted up--and one he’d seen not so long ago--called  _ The Death of Cain _ . Who had he seen it with? Not Riff. Not Oscar. Uncle Neil? It must be, because he’d not remarked on his namesake when they’d seen the painting where so many others would. 

(Smoothed with the salve, Riff was pressing the heel of his hand along Cain’s spine, loosening knots, warming cold and stiff places. Something gave way in the small of his back and Cain, with a small, low sound, dropped deeper into the pillow.)

For all it was a painting of a death, it seemed a luminous sort of image. No violence, no stones, no walls of a city falling in on his head. Instead the first Cain aged beyond imagination under a hood, collapsing onto himself like  _ The Dying Gaul _ . Collapsing, it seemed, on an altar. And behind him? An angel, in rosy robes, with golden hair, reaching towards beams of sunlight falling through breaking stormclouds. Cain in shadow, the angel in light, but drawing him towards that light, and blossoming brambles at Cain’s feet.

They had studied it for a time and then moved on. But the image of it still lingered in his mind:  _ The Death of Cain _ . That light--salvation, perhaps? And why not? The curse lifted, the mark removed, and Cain forgiven. Was such a thing possible? (Though he tried, for a moment, to remember if Dante had put Cain in hell.)

“I think you must be thinking of something else now, Lord Cain.”

Salve,  _ salve _ , salvation--to heal, to make well: that particular meaning hidden under all three words. Riff was rubbing long, smooth strokes down his back.

“I am, yes. I was thinking of a painting.”

“A painting?”

Now he daubed the salve on Cain’s left shoulder and Cain turned his face towards it. The start of one long scar hung there on his shoulder, stretching across shoulderblade and spine, a long red cord that faded at last near his right hip. Riff’s fingers followed the line, moving smooth circles and pressing in orange and comfort.

“Yes. One I saw some years ago, one of an old man and an angel.”

“I see.”

Riff said nothing more, only moving on, lower now, shoulderblade, the back of his ribs, the small of his back. First one hand, then the other--that quirk of his, where either hand could serve each for the other, where both hands were both as quick, both as strong as each other. And yet--and Cain remembered Uncle Neil again in that moment--some things must be done right to left, it is meet and right so to do. 

_ I have my reasons for it: he is the only one who can touch my scars. And he does, despite how it pollutes him each time. _

He spoke at last: “I suppose you could be an angel, with your silvery hair. And you did give Oscar a scare when he first met you--that’s rather like an angel’s ‘fear not!’ I think.” And he settled the pillow more comfortably beneath him; indeed, feeling quite a bit better now. “Yes, fear not. This is the archangel Riffael, angel of medicine.” He turned his face away. “You’re far more apt to be an angel than I am.”

Riff did not rise to the bait; he knew it for what it was and knew when to take it, when and how and what to say to answer Cain’s moods, to parry as it were when Cain was in a mood for that sort of a game. Now was not such a time. There would be a thousand other games, a thousand angels and a thousand devils. And was Riff smiling again? Perhaps he was.

As Riff’s left hand passed across Cain’s shoulder again, Cain caught it, brought palm (brightly, smelling brightly of oranges now and the sweet burning smoke of honey) and wrist to his mouth. A moment.   
  
"We both have our marks, haven't we? Inside and out."

Riff’s long fingers touched Cain’s face lightly. “I think perhaps we do.”

“And can you heal both?”

“I will certainly try.”

A long silence settled softly in the room, like fog, like sweet smoke, like dreams.

It took only a little of the liniment for the moment; there would be cause to use more as the winter went on. Still, it was softening each scar even now, already. And Riff was, almost aimlessly but certainly not uselessly, rubbing Cain’s back--from his neck to the small of his back and up again. Firmly at first, of course, to undo the last of the knots (Cain rocking and sinking against the bed each time), but then gentler--something to calm and to soothe the mind more than the body. A soft touch, as one would comfort a child--but a comfort and a kind of comfort Cain had never known as a child.

But Cain was dozing now, his hair and his face soft with sleep. Riff rose at last, leaving pitcher and basin and salve there at the hearth for the nonce. He rubbed the last of the salve into his own hands and then wiped them on the cloth over the pitcher. But the clean water from the basin he poured into the kettle and swung it over the fire. The kettle rattled and creaked toward boiling. The steam could be soothing too. He rolled his sleeves down again, closed the cuffs again.

Still kneeling between the bed and the hearth, he whispered, “I’ll leave you to rest now, Lord Cain.”

But before he could truly rise to go, Cain put out his hand.

“Riff?”

And Riff took his hand, gently pressing the bones of his fingers, the pads of his palm--delicate, small, like a bird in his hands. And they stayed this way for a moment, hand in hand (Riff’s hand so soft and so warm), Cain half asleep, Riff not yet risen to go.

It was bidden and unbidden, an unconscious but necessary gesture: Riff leaned closer then and smoothed Cain’s dark hair back from his face. And Cain, though on the edge of sleep, smiled as he had when he was a child, proud and mysterious.

“Thank you, Riff.”

Riff had to smile himself--the liniment had worked wonders twice over. But, of course, he’d knew it would. There were always two pains to Cain’s scars: the pain itself and what lay beneath it. It seemed, for now, that both were soothed.

Gently, so as not to wake him, Riff settled Cain’s hand back on the bed. And Cain turned a little to rest more on his shoulder, safe, hidden, and warm.   


Riff stepped away as silently as he could. And just before he turned the key to slip out of the room again he whispered, “Rest well, Lord Cain.”

*** *** ***

He had only turned from locking the door again when a bright voice caught him in the hall: Merryweather.

“Well, there  _ you  _ are. But I was looking for Cain.”

Riff put a finger to his lips and crouched to speak to her. “Lord Cain hasn’t been feeling well this afternoon. He’s taking some rest.”   
  
“That would explain it.” She sniffed delicately at the air. "Riff, why do you smell of oranges? Are you hiding some from me?"   
  
He smiled. "I think you know where I'd hide any oranges I might have."   
  
"That is true. And I've not found any today."   
  
"Come, Miss Merry." She reached for his hand--very soft now, and warm--and he led her back down the stairs again. "We'll let your brother rest for a while. And if he isn't down in time for dinner, you and I can take a late supper to him in his room."

Cain, half asleep in the velvet hiding-place of his bed curtains, with the evening truly falling now and the blue light cast on the walls, with the gray clouds moving in from the sea, with the kettle next to the fire breathing steam into the air, with his scars now soothed (for the moment, for the moment), heard them go. And he smiled a little and started to dream.

And next year at this time, perhaps in Spain, perhaps in Italy, there will be oranges at the table at every meal, and more lolling about in a bowl in the afternoon sun--of course there will be sun, and blue skies.  _ We shall all be sick of oranges by the time winter is over. We’ll come back with the birds in spring.  _

For winter will one day be over and in the spring there will be other flowers than roses.


End file.
